Monday, June 30, 2014

(TRIGGER WARNING!!! For all the women out there, this post is probably VERY TRIGGERY. Please be aware of this before you read it.)

To all the men out there who have
daughters, nieces, granddaughters or hope to have them someday, this is for
you.

I want you to take a minute and
imagine saying this:

“I’m sorry, honey. You don’t have
the right…”

You don’t have the right to birth
control pills, even if they’re deemed medically necessary because you have
ovarian cysts or uterine cancer or any number of other conditions that require
them to make your body whole and well. Because the men of this country have
determined that the religious rights of someone you don’t even know – someone with
a penis - are more important than your life.

You don’t have the right to
protect your body from unplanned pregnancy. If you don’t want to get pregnant,
don’t have sex with boys. Besides, if you’re having sex that makes you a slut and
a whore. So you deserve to get pregnant.

No, boys can’t be sluts or
whores. Boys are exempt from that title because they have penises. And the needs
of their penises trump your right to protect yourself. In fact, they are
encouraged to enlighten everyone about their conquest of you so that everyone
can know your vagina is open for business. And then you will be expected to
provide access for other penises by default. Sure, you can ask the boys to
cover their penis with a condom, but penises don’t like to be covered. You
should have planned for that before you opened your vagina for business.

No. You don’t have the right to
go to a doctor or a clinic and ask about birth control. Only sluts and whores
ask to be put on birth control. If you do choose to do that, then you have to
accept the consequences of that action.

If you do want birth control, you
will have to walk the Gauntlet of Shame to get to the clinic that provides that
sort of thing. You will be expected to look at pictures of dead fetuses. You
will have to endure the insults people shout at you. You will be spit at and
shoved by complete strangers. You will have to stop and listen to people
explaining their religious beliefs to you. These people will also explain why
you’re going to Hell in detail. They will give you pamphlets about it. They
will attempt to block you from entering the clinic. There is a distinct
possibility you will die in the attempt because some of these religious people
believe the only way to protect fetuses is by killing the mothers. Yes, I know
that doesn’t make sense, but the courts have ruled that fetuses and penises are
more important than your life.

If you somehow manage to gain
access to birth control, you will have to pay for it yourself. Insurance will
not cover it, because it is a choice. It’s expensive, so you may have to give
up other things to afford it. Why? You are choosing to be a whore. No, it doesn't matter if you need it for medical reasons. There is no good reason for birth control.

You could also lose your job for
taking birth control. So you will have to do it in secret. Why? Your employer’s
rights are more important than your body or your life. If they don’t like you
taking birth control, you can’t take it.

And what happens if you do get
pregnant?

Abortion is not a viable option. It
doesn’t matter if your body is not mature enough to carry this child. It doesn’t
matter if the child has multiple birth defects. It doesn’t matter if the
pregnancy puts your life at risk. You will carry this child, you will give
birth to this child, and you will devote the rest of your life to raising it,
whether you like it or not, on your own.

No, the father doesn’t have that
same responsibility. You’re the slut. You’re the one that allowed him access to
your vagina. It’s your fault and your problem. Sure, you can make him cover
some finances, but he doesn’t have to commit to the same degree of lifetime
care as you do. He’s a boy. His penis
exempts him from the consequences.

Yes, you can get financial help
from the government. But you will have to endure humiliation and shame to
receive it. After all, you shouldn’t have had a child if you couldn’t afford
it. Bottom feeder. Whore. Slut.

What if you are raped?

That doesn’t matter. There are religious
groups who believe that pregnancy from rape is a miracle and their rights to
believe that trump your rights to survive what is a life-altering violation.
Religious rights outweigh your rights. Get over it. It was probably your fault,
anyway. That’s the government’s - a body largely made up of penis carrying members - stance on the subject.

Okay, yes, there are places that
provide counseling and help should you find yourself pregnant and unable or
unwilling to care for a child, but to get to them you will have to travel long
distances and endure the Gauntlet of Shame. You remember that? Dead fetuses. Spitting. Shoving.
Religious shaming. Slut shaming. Death threats. Humiliation. Hate.

This is what it means to be a
woman in America, sweetheart. Accept it. You have no right to make decisions to
protect your body. There is no choice for you.

Can you see yourself saying
that??

Stand up for your daughters, for your nieces, for your granddaughters and their
rights.

This is America. But its not the America I grew up in and its not the America I want my son or future grandchildren to grow up in. Women have the right to make decisions about their own bodies and their health.

(If you're curious, I'm the mother of one wonderful young man with Aspergers Syndrome. I was a shy, introverted, Catholic 16 yr old when I was put on birth control because of ovarian cysts. They damaged my left ovary and landed me in the emergency room. Despite that, my father didn't speak to me for 4 months after it because it meant I 'could' have sex. It was a traumatic experience. I never even kissed a boy until I was 19! Given the choice, no matter my circumstances, I would never choose abortion. That's my choice. But I believe its a viable, reasonable option and needs to be available. Same goes for birth control. And that's more than you need to know.)

Saturday, April 19, 2014

For those of you who suffer from
depression like me – true depression, the kind that fucks up your life – I want
to warn you this might be a trigger.

Imagine you open your eyes to find
yourself standing knee deep in brackish water. You’re completely alone. The
silence is deafening to the point that it creates its own kind of buzz. If you
listen hard enough, you can almost make out words in that buzz, but the words
are dark and angry, so you do your best not to listen too closely.

As you let your gaze travel the
landscape, you realize that in every direction, all there is murky water periodically
choked with thick reeds. Above you, the sky is a pale, grayish blue and the sun
a sharp white light, both blinding and dim.

Something slides along your calf,
and you feel the sharp edge of razor teeth. As you look down at the water that
enfolds your lower legs, you notice odd, dark objects moving just below the
surface. Whatever they are, these shapes are writhing and slithering nearer and
nearer.

As you stand there, you can feel
the mud seeping into your shoes, sucking at them and pulling you deeper down. You
know you have to move.

You shade your eyes and look for
safer ground. Far off in the distance, you can see the shape of a dead tree,
its gnarled bare branches jutting up from the marsh. That has to be better than
where you are now. But to get there, you must move in water that’s so dark you
have no idea what lies beneath your feet.

You take a step. Your shoes squelch
and threaten to abandon your feet, but you manage to keep them on.
Unfortunately, as you move, the shapes beneath the water move along with you.
One bumps against you, and again you feel teeth nibbling at your exposed skin.
You let out a shout for help, hoping that someone will hear you, but your voice
is carried off in the wind and it’s as if you never spoke.

You move again. One step. Two.
The sun beats down on you. It should be comforting, that light, but instead it
just reminds you how exposed you are. How alone. But you keep moving because
standing still isn’t an option.

Your next step plunges you into a
deeper patch of water. You drop down and the water surges up to your waist. The
reeds slap at your face and for a moment you think you’ll plunge beneath the
water. But you use those same reeds to keep your balance, grasping them in
sweaty hands and righting yourself. The shapes beneath the water are twisting
around your legs in a frenzy. For the first time, you feel the true power of
their teeth as they tear at your flesh, ripping away pieces of you.

The tree is closer now, but it
seems farther away. You’re frozen in place, waiting for the creatures beneath
the water to stop feeding. And they do, though they continue to brush against
your skin. The sensation is both painful and propelling. You can’t stay here.

As you lurch forward, breath
coming in sharp gasps, heart pounding, they surge with you. With each step the
water gets deeper. The mud sucks away your shoes. The reeds slap and scrape and
tear at you. The sharp teeth bite deeper and deeper, sinking into bone.

And still you keep moving, taking
steps as you can. Fear is your constant companion. Fear of motion. Fear of
standing still. Fear of being devoured by the things that lurk beneath the water.

Eventually, night falls. In the
darkness, chest deep in the muck, you stand and wait. You’re exhausted,
physically and mentally. You can no longer see where you’re going and those
things beneath the water have multiplied. They’re hungrier than ever.

The fear of taking a step that
will send you completely underwater in the dark overwhelms the need to find
safe ground.

You wait.

When the sun rises, you can see
the tree. It doesn’t seem to be any closer. It sits on a small island of marshy
moss. You work your way to it, determined to reach it before you’re devoured by
the creatures below. So you take another step.

Only somehow, the marsh water has
thickened. It’s like walking through molasses or hardening cement. Worse, the
creatures are trying to herd you from the safety of that mossy little plot of
land. And the sun beats down, searing your skin. The reeds slice and cut your
hands as you use them to propel yourself along.

You’re cold. You’re tired. You’re
in constant, unrelenting pain.

As much as you want to reach that
tree, you find yourself wishing that you would just step in a spot so deep that
you would drop under the water. It would be so much easier to just let the mud
inside. It would be a relief to not come up again. It would be over.

But you push on. Time has no
meaning. The sun rises and blisters and sets. The mud coats you, so that you
don’t resemble yourself so much as you resemble a swamp creature. And
still the things beneath the surface feed on you, bite by bite.

Time loses meaning. The sun
rises, sets and rises again and again. And always the tree is there just a little too far to reach.

Sometimes you see groups of
people running through the marsh like it’s a playground. They’re unaffected by
its dangers - immune to it even - as they follow a path that you can’t see. Their
feet dance across the water. Their laughter fills the air. You call out to them
for help, but more often than not your voice is drowned by the swamp. Occasionally
one of them will pause and make their way to you. They’ll pull you free of the
mud with an ease you resent as much as you appreciate it. You ask them to wait,
to show you the way out. But they race away across the water, leaving you
behind exhausted and struggling to gain your feet.

It’s as if they were born lighter
than you.

Sometimes you don’t call out to
them at all because you know they can’t help you. It’s easier to stay buried,
devoured and shredded, than to start over on a path you can’t see and plunge
off again into the murk.

Sometimes you see others like
you, plodding and pushing through the marsh. Sometimes you get close enough to
reach out to them and pull them to a safer spot. Sometimes they do the same for
you. Sometimes you watch them go under. More often, you just acknowledge each
others journey with a weary look of understanding before continuing on. Each
encounter leaves a heavy weight on you that burrows deep inside your chest.

You’re determined not to slip
beneath the water despite carrying that extra weight of those that didn’t make
it.

Eventually, you do make it to the
little island, rising from the swamp, your body weighted by the sludge of your
journey, battered, bleeding, but alive. You stand on that tiny piece of land,
barefoot and flayed, not sure who you are anymore. So many pieces of you are
lost to the swamp. You should be happy. You should be relieved. You made it.

Only there is no sustenance here. The tree is dead and withered. The moss sinks where you stand on it. You may be above the mud for the
moment, but you’re alone, exposed, and there is no respite for you. It’s just a
way station on your journey. A place to catch your breath before you plunge back
down into the mire.

There is no end to this swamp.

The last few weeks, I’ve been
fighting like hell to keep my head above water. Everything seems to be a
trigger for both my depression and anxiety. I don’t have a good reason why -
maybe it’s a moon phase thing or a seasonal thing or just a general weariness from
being alone and isolated for so long. Whatever the reason, I found that every
time I logged onto Facebook or Twitter and interacted with anyone, I was
overwhelmed by panic attacks that had me head-between-my-legs freaking out.

My brain tells me things that I
know are lies. That if I died, no one would notice or care. That those few
people I do interact with on social media sites likely consider me a freak. That
no one wants to talk to me.

I’m a fringe person.

I’m invisible.

I don’t belong anywhere.

Depression lies, I know this.

But sometimes it carries painful
truths.

The truth is I am alone.
I am isolated.

My social interaction on a daily
basis includes listening to my son expound upon various computer related
topics, most of which I don’t understand and rarely am able to comment on. My
husband never wants to talk about anything – and often will go off by himself
when he is home. I’m pretty sure he can’t stand me. I know he struggles to deal with our son. But he’s too good of a
person to actually bail on us.

I am largely a silent person.
Sometimes I go an entire day without speaking other than saying “un hunh” a
thousand times. Other than that, it’s brief conversations with cashiers at the grocery store and my Twitter
feed that remind me I still exist on some level.
Some days I just want to start screaming and never stop just to hear my voice.

All of my friends and most of my
family deserted me over the years because they couldn’t relate to my life. They
have normal lives. They didn’t have to deal with therapies and doctors and
special education services and all the things that come along with a child with
special needs. He’s an adult now. They're still gone.

Some of them did it quietly and
gradually. They slipped away without me noticing because I was too busy dealing
with one disaster after another. Others broke away with hurtful words or
ignorant statements. Some I was forced to walk away from or lose a piece of what’s
left of my soul and sanity.

When my son was four, someone I
love dearly said she was sick of listening to mothers like me complaining
about their brats, and that if I just disciplined him and started doing my job,
my son would be normal. She said that I wasn’t fit to be a mother. That’s the
kindest version of what was said. The truth is it was much more ugly and
hurtful. And that wasn’t even the worst thing that has been said to me over the years
by friends, family and strangers alike.

Whatever.

I’m alive. I’m here. Alone. Freak.
Loser. Dragging myself through the muck, buried chest deep. And oh so tired. But
I’ll get to that stupid little plot of moss and gather myself up and keep on
going because I don’t have a choice.

The swamp doesn’t get to win.

I’ll still be on social media,
though for now it’s probably going to be limited to quick posts about what I’m reading
or maybe some pics of my art. I can't handle the panic that interactions bring. I hope those who follow me will keep following
me, though I’ll understand if you don’t. It’s okay.

Saturday, February 1, 2014

There's a lot of talk in my house about Bitcoins these days. Kiddo is absolutely fascinated with them & has even tried his hand at 'mining' them. I have a rudimentary understanding of them, which is slightly better than Hubs understanding, so I attempted to explain them to him after Kiddo got so frustrated the conversation between them had dissolved to insult slinging.

Annnnyway....here is my explanation of Bitcoins for dummies.

In order for it to work you first need a 'bank'. This bank has actual money that is converted into a Bitcoin. You also need a buyer, a seller and a Paypal like system of middlemen for the transaction to go through.

For my explanation, assume a bitcoin is equivalent to a $10 coin made up of 1000 pennies. In reality, because it is cybermoney it is made up of 1000 strings of code (numbers/letters/symbols) called 'hashes'. Its kind of like being handed 1000 promissory notes, each with its own secret code to identify it as a legitimate penny. Individually, these strings are as worthless as pennies, but combined they make up a single $10 note of spendable money. The bank is very careful to not only keep a record of each and every penny of code it has created, but where every one of those pennies are presently located.

Now, you have a person - for my purposes, I'm going to use a character from one of my favorite series - Jane Yellowrock. Jane is shopping on Overstock (which in reality accepts bitcoins as payment) and sees this incredible tunsten steel/silver collar which she absolutely needs to protect her throat from vampire bites. The collar costs $20, but can also be paid for with 2 Bitcoins. It turns out Jane has a very clever computer kid working for her. He uses his computers to help out the bitcoin bank in processing transactions and so Jane has bitcoins to spend.

Jane pays for the collar using 2 bitcoins. What happens next? The middlemen take over.

There is a collective pool of computer geeks or 'miners' have set up their computers to help the bank process transactions - kind of like Paypal plays the middleman between people when they're buying and selling things on ebay.

Now, if you were to walk into a store and try to pay for something with pennies, what happens? The poor person at the counter has to count each and every penny, right? It's the same thing with bitcoins. Each of the 1000 pieces of the bitcoin have to be individually examined to make sure they're real. To look at each of the 1000 takes time. Because the bank doesn't have the time to process each and every hash of code (it would need a giant supercomputer), the middlemen computers step in.

These thousands of computers all over the world are presented with Jane's 2000 strings of code for the 2 bitcoins Jane uses. In other words, each individual string of code is examined by a number of different computers, and those computers determine collectively (based on the information the bank provides) if it is a legitimate code created by the bank and if it actually belongs to Jane (because the bank is fastidious about keeping track). When the collective is finished and has determined that the each and every hash/penny is really a hash/penny, which means the bitcoin is legitimate, the transaction goes through to Overstock and Jane gets her collar.

Now, the bank needs to pay these middlemen for the work they do, because its time & electricity consuming. So, for every transaction they're involved in they get a paid a couple of hashes - in other words a piece of a bitcoin. Sometimes its just one hash, sometimes it's more. Eventually, if the middlemen computers check the hash codes on enough transactions they will have 1000 hashes (or 1000 pennies) and have their own bitcoin, which they can then spend.

Does that make sense now? The reality is bitcoin is the promissory note or payment of the future. Whether it sticks around or not remains to be seen, but we accepted paper money so the likelihood as we go into a more computer oriented society is that bitcoin (or something similar) is here to stay.